Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Adventure Day

Yesterday we did make our own adventure. We loaded up the truck with drinks, lunch, water, Radar (dog), and birdhouse cleaning materials/tools. You see, we have a bird box trail at a wildlife refuge almost 3 hour drive from here (read, the middle of nowhere). We have been waiting for the weather to improve. Well..it finally has...we have had 4 nice days in a row. Temperatures going from 50 degrees to 90 degrees. It is a shock to us humans, acclimatizing in that heat.

More about the adventure...Hubby woke me up long before I usually do. On the road before 7am. A three hour drive east into ranching country in SE Oregon, Summer Lake. A very pretty day and nice quiet drive on a Monday morning. We cleaned out the bird boxes pretty quickly, someone had already cleaned the ones close to the roads. There were only about 20 that were off road, that we cleaned. We ate our picnic lunch in the shade. (The cafe there is terrible, so we bring our own food.) We headed home by about 2 pm. The thunderstorms were on the horizon, along the Cascade Mountains. We made a side trip to our favorite campground, it was open and they were taking fees of ten dollars a night. There were 4 campsites occupied.

Onward toward home, the storm looked terrible...and it was as we drove over Willamette Pass. We barely made it home as it hit us. The sky turned very dark, and it rained hard for about 1/2 hour. The rain gauge had 0.6" of water ...wow...we just do not have a downpour like that very often. Lightening coming down...thankfully none near us. We have had lightening hit right beside our home, and had some appliances killed from the current (now I have surge protectors on the electronics).